(by Steve Hopkins, photo by WTT)
The WTT Finals Women Nagoya concluded today with World No. 1 Sun Yingsha defeating World No. 4 Wang Yidi 4-2 in the Final. Its sometimes hard to decipher the seeding between the top Chinese women, as China has 6 of the top 7 ranked players in the World. As it turned out, China had all four of the Semifinalists, and the only player outside of the World Top 4 to reach the Semifinals was Chen Xingtong (World No. 6) by virtue of her upset of teammate Wang Manyu (World No. 2).
There were no easy places in this draw – which consisted of the best 16 players in the World. Japan’s Miwa Harimoto won the first and fourth games against World No. 1 Sun Yingsha in their opening match. Sun then dominated Europe’s top ranked player, Germany’s Ying Han 3-0, and pounded World No. 3 Chen Meng 4-1 before winning the Final. The highest ranked non-Chinese player, Hina Hayata, had a tough draw facing World No. 3 Chen Meng in the first round (Meng won with a come from behind 3-2 victory). In that same section of the draw, Adriana Diaz fell to Mima Ito 3-1 before Ito also fell to Chen Meng.
Five of China’s 8 entries were in the bottom half of the draw where only Chinese players advanced from the first round. The first upset came in the second round when Wang Many fell to Cheng Xingtong. And that upset run ended quickly, as Wang Yidi topped Xingtong 4-1 in their Semifinal match.
China also won the Doubles event with Wang Manyu and Sun Yingsha topping Japan’s Miyuu Kihara and Miyu Nagasaki.
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